Devils, Demons and Dragons

Oh how my eyes roll when I hear that daft story about why these delightful demons leer down over Cornhill in the City of London. If you don't know what I talking about, go google. I mean, really, eh?! If true, why did the clergy leave them in place? They are indeed unique in form, possibly one-offs, but they aren't the only sculptures of this type in London – you need only to look up and around you to see that London is splattered with fabulously devilish embellishments akin to these fellas. And I'm not here talking about gargoyles and grotesques on churches and the like.

To illustrate my point, I've put together here a selection of some of my favourites, starting a few minutes' walk from these little demons. And I'll start at the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Cannon Street where there are lots of strange lumpy lizards:

At first glance the building resembles a triangular wedding cake, but look closer and see that between the windows on the upper floors there are many different dragon-like beasts, each one totally unique as if made by a different person. 

From here, continue along Queen Victoria St to The Blackfriars public house where you'll find these two spooky fellas in amongst all the other marvellous embellishments there:

Next, to another public house, and probably my favourite London demons. Every time I am near Paddington Station I have to make a detour to check that this old Truman's pub with its its unusual adornments is still intact:

 

Many residential properties built in the late Victorian to Edwardian era feature baying dragons above the front windows. These, I think, would have been available from the equivalent of today's Wickes or Travis Perkins builders supplies store:

And then there are serpents and mythological beasts on door knobs in Marylebone, under windows in Kensington and climbing up many different kinds of buildings, such as here in Chancery Lane:

You'll find them on tiled shop fronts in Kensington, splattered liberally across the exterior of St Pancras Hotel, or lurking within panels and friezes as per here (below) on a Fulham pub, or sitting atop other watering holes in Earls Court and Clapton: 

Aren't they fabulous?! Fantastically fabulous!

Faust at The Coliseum

Terry Gilliam has made a few of my favourite films; Brazil, Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys. Some of his other ones are just plain silly. He has never understood the term ‘less is more’. Bless him for that.

So I thought his OTT style would be well-suited to the opera stage, and when a friend offered me a ticket I jumped at it. This latest production by the ENO is in English and set in Nazi Germany.

I must admit I didn’t know the story before I went. I had a rough idea about faust selling his soul to the devil and all that, but no more. So, here is my own personal understanding of what took place on the stage in front of me last night (bear in mind a lot of this may be incorrect; it’s only my interpretation):

Baldy devilly man Mephistopheles introduces us to the story. Cut to Faust having a nice time in the forest writing on some strange unfolding blackboard (why?), singing badly. He is accosted by 3 young people and then moves to higher ground where later he sees a load of forest people come out to play at night. One is a man with a beard dressed as the May Queen who gets a bit fresh with F.

Then a handful of kings and heads of different Euro lands try to carve up the map but it turns into war... Faust stumbling through fields of dead people, and he ends up performing surgery on the wounded. (Oh, so he’s a doctor? Was I supposed to know that?).

Meph takes F to a beer keller full of horrible bad people. F not impressed. F leaves disgusted, and sleeps.

Meph takes him to a big party of toffs in the forest. Faust thinks one woman is his true love Marguerite (who hell she? Where did she pop up from? Had I missed something?)

F and Meph in Marg’s flat. F sniffing her pillow and being weird and creepily obsessed. He hides behind curtain. She comes back, puts on a blond wig to hide her Jew-ness and sings about some old King bloke. Later F appears, she is really pleased to see him and they dry hump on the bed urged on my Meph. Outside Jews being beaten and put on trains. Marg arrested too and somehow everyone knows what she’s been up to.

F goes back to the forest and sulks. Meph says if F will serve him forever he will take F to Marg. Great scene with bike journey. Meph has lied – bike crashes. F dies and goes to hell. Turns out Meph only wanted F’s soul. Never trust a devil eh?! Final scene lots of dead people heaped up in a pile reminicient of Belson.

Many of Gilliam’s visuals were really clever. And just as well, as I needed the them to get my mind off some of the dreadful music. In fact I was rather bored by it in many places esp as in this promo Gilliam talks about Berlioz’s loud dramatic score; that you 'resonate' when you hear his music. Not so for me. I had been looking forward to losing myself in the loud and powerful… I cannot recall a single refrain.

And then there’s the singing. Opera is often maligned by many people for it just sounding like someone is just giving us a bad running commentary about what they are doing in the ‘I am singing what I am doing' style. It's sort of like Facebook on stage.

Perhaps I should start singing, “I am sitting AT my comPUterrrr…. I am writing a blog POST… the weather outside is sUnny…”? The caps are there for emphasis/loudness to highlight the parts that this style of singing highlights – the wrong, most meaningless, word in almost every instance.

My conclusion as to how all this happens is that this may not have been a problem sung in the original French… perhaps the words that need emphasis fall in the correct place/ on the right note? But then that doesn’t solve my other observation that in many cases what is being said-sung seems to be completely at odds with the what the orchestra is playing.

Oh I dunno. It looked good though. And I am glad I went.

And a good thing is I now have this on my brain.

Pics above include devils from Cornhill and Praed Street